An explosion has occurred within the past hour at the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3 nuclear reactor in Japan. It appears to by a hydrogen explosion similar to the one which occurred at Unit 1 on Saturday. There had been reports earlier in the day that radiation had been rising at the reactor, similar to what had been reported before the earlier explosion at Unit 1.

Yesterday, the emergency cooling system at Unit 3 had failed, prompting officials to announce another "nuclear emergency" following the earthquake and tsunami that occurred in Japan one day earlier. Officials had taken the unusual measure to cool the reactor with sea water, which means it's unlikely to be usable ever again.

The previous explosion at Unit 1 is said to have destroyed the building housing the nuclear reactor --- causing what was variously described as a "partial meltdown" or "deformation" of at least one of the uranium fuel rods --- but did not breach the reactor container itself, so the release of radioactivity is said to have been minor. Officials are signaling a similar situation here.

Additional reports, updates, photos and videos on the new explosion all now being added below. Newest UPDATES at bottom...

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8:20pm PT: CNN reports officials are saying the container vessel at Unit 3, just like at Unit 1 before it, was not been breached in the blast...

8:28pm PT: From The Daily Yomiuri on Twitter: "Authorities are prohibiting people from coming within 5km of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant after this morning's two explosions." ... "6 Self Defense Force personnel and one nuclear power plant worker are unaccounted for after this morning's explosions at the Fukushima plant"

"Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano says, in spite of the blast at Unit 3, no damage has occurred to the primary containment vessel." ... "The blast at Unit 3 is deemed to be the same kind as occurred to Unit 1 of Fukushima Power Plant I on Saturday, judging from the situation.: ... "Regarding the blast at Unit 3, there is little possibility that a large amount of radioactive materials are released to the air - Mr. Edano"

A spokesman for Japan's nuclear and industrial safety agency spokesman said a worst-case scenario had been avoided. But he added that residents inside the 20km exclusion zone had been ordered to stay indoors and close all windows.

10:10pm PT: CNN is reporting that officials had expected this hydrogen explosion "all day". If so, it certainly begs the question as to why 6 workers, as of now, were reported to have been injured by it.

11:20pm PT: Likely more directly related to the previous explosion, than this new one, but the New York Times is reporting that U.S. troops headed to Japan to help out may have been dosed with some radioactivity from the troubled nuke plants in Japan...

The Pentagon was expected to announce that the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, which is sailing in the Pacific, passed through a radioactive cloud from stricken nuclear reactors in Japan, causing crew members on deck to receive a month’s worth of radiation in about an hour, government officials said Sunday.

The officials added that American helicopters flying missions about 60 miles north of the damaged reactors became coated with particulate radiation that had to be washed off.

There was no indication that any of the military personnel had experienced ill effects from the exposure. (Everyone is exposed to a small amount of natural background radiation.)

But the episodes showed that the prevailing winds were picking up radioactive material from crippled reactors in northeastern Japan.
...
Blogs were churning with alarm. But officials insisted that unless the quake-damaged nuclear plants deteriorated into full meltdown, any radiation that reached the United States would be too weak to do any harm.

The rest of the piece goes on to discuss U.S. monitoring of radiation clouds which could drift eastward towards the United States.

The U.S. Pacific 7th Fleet has just released an announcement that they have "temporarily repositioned its ships and aircraft away from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi Nuclear Power Plant after detecting low level contamination in the air and on its aircraft operating in the area."

"For perspective," the statement continues, "the maximum potential radiation dose received by any ship’s force personnel aboard the ship when it passed through the area was less than the radiation exposure received from about one month of exposure to natural background radiation from sources such as rocks, soil, and the sun."

It concludes, "As a precautionary measure, USS Ronald Reagan and other U.S. 7th Fleet ships conducting disaster response operations in the area have moved out of the downwind direction from the site to assess the situation and determine what appropriate mitigating actions are necessary."

On a related note, ABC News' Akiko Fujita tweets the photo below, along with this note: "At evac center in Fukushima prefecture where [people] are getting tested for radiation. Residents all on edge."

TOKYO — A second explosion rocked a troubled nuclear power plant Monday, blowing the roof off a containment building but not harming the reactor, Japanese nuclear officials announced on public television.
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“I have received reports that the containment vessel is sound,” [Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano] said. “I understand that there is little possibility that radioactive materials are being released in large amounts.”

Twenty-two people who live near the plant are already showing signs of radiation exposure from earlier radiation releases at the plant, but it is not clear if they received dangerous doses.
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The government was testing people who lived near the Daiichi plant, with local officials saying that about 170 residents had probably been exposed. The government earlier said that three workers had radiation illness, but Tokyo Electric said Monday that only one worker was ill.

The article concludes by offering an explanation of where things stand at this point, and what the general challenges are that are currently being faced by workers at a number of the troubled reactors...

Technicians are essentially fighting for time while heat generation in the fuel gradually declines, trying to keep the rods covered despite a breakdown in the normal cooling system, which runs off the electrical grid. Since that was knocked out in the earthquake, and diesel generators later failed — possibly because of the tsunami — the operators have used a makeshift system for keeping cool water on the fuel rods.

Now, they pump in new water, let it boil and then vent it to the atmosphere, releasing some radioactive material. But they are having difficulty even with that, and have sometimes allowed the water levels to drop too low, exposing the fuel to steam and air, with resulting fuel damage.

On Sunday, Japanese nuclear officials said operators at the plant had suffered a setback trying to bring one of the reactors under control when a valve malfunction stopped the flow of water and left fuel rods partially uncovered. The delay raised pressure at the reactor.

At a late-night news conference, officials at Tokyo Electric Power said that the valve had been fixed, but that water levels had not yet begun rising.

11:39pm PT: Another video of the explosion gives a better sense of the scale...

11:52pm PT:Another cooling system failure at yet another reactor?

Three separate news agencies, The Dialy Yomiuri, Jiji News Agency and NHK are all tweeting that the cooling system has failed at the No. 2 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and that water levels there are falling.

I've been unable to find confirm of that yet in any article or statement online, however.

If the report is true, that could signal that Fukushima's reactor Unit 2 could now be on track for the same fate as seen at reactor Units 1 and 3, as they each had reported similar cooling system failures about 24 hours before hydrogen levels got high enough finally to cause explosions...

TOKYO, March 14 (Reuters) - Cooling functions have stopped and water levels are falling in the No.2 reactor at Tokyo Electric Power Co's Fukumshma (sic) Daiichi nuclear plant damaged by a powerful earthquake, Jiji news agency said on Monday.

3/14 12:29am PT: Okay, NHK's streaming video news just reported:

This just in: No. 2 reactor at Fukishima Daiichi nuclear plant has lost all its coolant. Pressure inside the vessel is rising.

3/14 12:53am PT: Another video of the Unit 3 explosion. Perhaps the best view yet, with sound...

12:57am PT:Deja Deja Vu Vu: Back to Fukushima Daiichi's reactor Unit 2 which, as noted above, has now had its cooling system fail like Units 1 & 3 before it. The Daily Yomiuri tweets that the government is announcing seawater will be injected into it as coolant --- just as we saw with 1 & 3 before they eventually saw hydrogen explosions.

2:04am PT: CNN's Tokyo correspondent reports (on TV) that the failure of the cooling system in Unit 2 is due to power knocked out by the explosion in next door Unit 3, leaving Units 1, 2 and 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi's nuclear plant (sometimes called Fukushima No. 1) all now facing serious cooling problems, with pressure rising in the so-far-unexploded No. 2.

3/14 3:53pm PT: I cannot even imagine the hell that workers at Fukushima Daiichi are staring down into right now. Last night, after my final update to this item before standing down (though my updates continued on Twitter here from bed, until about 5am PT), news broke that the fuel rods at Unit 2 had become fully exposed for a number of hours after a human error as the generators being used to pump sea water into the reactor had run out of fuel. That was/is an incredibly dangerous situation.

Later, news came in suggesting that the injection of sea water into the reactor in hopes of cooling it down had restarted, somewhat mitigating the exceedingly volatile situation --- at least a bit. For the moment, that seems to be where things stand, in general, at least publicly.

So to get us quickly caught up on this thread, as to where things stand, at least for now, here are the key issues at the moment, as I've been able to stitch them together over the past several hours. NOTE TO NEWS OUTLETS: Please include time-stamps, not just date-stamps, on your articles --- particularly during fast-breaking stories like this one! Thank you!!!

The Kyodo agency and the NYTimes seem to be offering the most timely overviews at the moment.

The Kyodo report offers a quote from Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano late last night, which may win the Understatement of the Year Award: The reactor "is not necessarily in a stable condition," he said at an early morning press conference.

They go on to report that "Prime Minister Naoto Kan said earlier in the morning that the government and TEPCO will set up an integrated headquarters, headed by himself, to address issues at the Fukushima" Daiichi plant. and that, "With radiation levels around the facility up, TEPCO suspects the core of the No. 2 reactor has partially melted, a critical nuclear safety situation."

They say that the fuel rods were fully exposed "for around two and a half hours," before sea water was injected and levels "increased temporarily but late Monday night they started dropping, leading to full exposure of the rods again."

Not good.

In the meantime, the New York Times reports that "at least parts of the fuel rods have been exposed for several hours," at Unit 2, which "suggests that some of the fuel has begun to melt," according to both government and TEPCO officials.

"In a worst case," they report, "the fuel pellets could also burn through the bottom of the containment vessel and radioactive material could pour out that way — often referred to as a full meltdown."

They go on to say that workers at the plant are in "full-scale panic":

Industry executives in touch with their counterparts in Japan Monday night grew increasingly alarmed about the risks posed by the No. 2 reactor.

“They’re basically in a full-scale panic” among Japanese power industry managers, said a senior nuclear industry executive. The executive is not involved in managing the response to the reactors’ difficulties but has many contacts in Japan. “They’re in total disarray, they don’t know what to do.”

The Times also notes: "The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Monday that the Japanese government had formally asked for assistance as it responds to the crisis in Fukushima."

And, as to Unit 3, they say:

But the situation a reactor No. 3 was being closely watched for another reason. That reactor uses a special mix of nuclear fuel known as MOX fuel. MOX is considered contentious because it is made with reprocessed plutonium and uranium oxides. Any radioactive plume from that fuel would be more dangerous than ordinary nuclear fuel, experts say, because inhaling plutonium even in very small quantities is considered lethal.

In a previous thread, we had asked a nuclear expert about that claim, and he generally poo-pooed the notion that plutonium MOX fuel was anymore dangerous than uranium-based fuel, saying that "if it was substantially worse than [uranium] fuel, they wouldn't be allowed to do it. Regulations forbid it," for whatever that's worth. To see his full comments on that, see the "3/12 6:58pm PT" update on this live blog thread, created to cover the first Fukushima explosion at Unit 1 over the weekend.

The Times also updates the number of those injured at No. 3 to 11 (from 6, as reported previously), "one seriously".

This is an epic song just made march 11th after i watched the news of Japan. Its dedicated to everyone that lost their lives. WHY ARE THESE EARTHQUAKES HAPPENING? Also everyone please i would like to bring to your attention HAARP. if you dont know what it is by now. you may want to ask yourself why you dont. research it. and when you get a chance please listen to my song and give me some feedback. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgQDnbnugdQ

A specialist medical team from the National Radiology Health Institute, flown by helicopter from Chiba to a field center 5 km from the No.1 Nuclear Plant, found radiation illness in 3 residents out of a sample group of 90. Overnight that number of civilian-nuclear "hibakusha" shot up to 19, but in other counts to 160. The evacuation zone has been further widened from 10 km to 20 km.

A third reactor, Unit 6, has lost its cooling system and is overheating along with Reactors 1 and 2.

Fukushima No.2 plant, further south, is ringed by a wall of silence as a quiet evacuation is being conducted.

Firefighters are pumping seawater into the three overheated Fukushima 1 reactors. The mandatory freshwater supply is missing, presumably due to tsunami contamination from surging ocean waves. An American nuclear expert has called this desperation measure the equivalent of a "Hail Mary pass"..

So, the Prime Minister should be hoping that Japan's tiny Christian community is feverishly praying. Because right now, Japan and much of the world are living on a prayer.http://en.m4.cn/archives/5789.html

I hope nuclear and fossil fuel pushers are happy now. We tried to stop the Diablo Canyon in San Luis Obispo from being built so close to our San Andreas Fault in 1981. Protestors against it being built were arrested, 1,900 of them. There are now plans to built 12 more, after 20 years of no new plants. Let's stop the building of new plants and get the government to invest and develop renewable energy, of course we might have to do it while glowing.

Side note: need to clarify level of meltdown... the term is being used for melted and deformed fuel rods... which in itself is very bad news but is not the same as "melted through the bottom of the reactor" which is not the same as "melted through the basement of the building and is headed for Africa."

Mox is a mix of uranium and plutonium and the contamination from a containment breach would be worse than straight uranium... but what kind of breach? What kind of meltdown?

a) comparing the explosions there are major differences. the second explosion was much heavier and had more power released directly up. also the concrete falling down is not a good sign as maybe parts of the concrete directly above the reactor containment were damaged. close inspection (as far as you can see anything) of the still after explosion indicates more damage to the plant. not only the casing of the top level as in the 1st explosion

b) this could severely influence the maintainance and cooling of all other plants due to contamination and explosive force

c) at this rate, if no external power is restored we are looking at least at 3 meltdowns possibly rising to 6 (depending on how hot the last reactors are and how fast their protection can be ensured). with this develloment the 2nd block will most likely also explode...

d) looking at the limited contamination data i personally belive that high to very high doses were and will be set free. at the moment fortunately still without the problematic high half-live heavy elements. so we are seriously looking at major 100-200 year influences. the one hope we can have is that tokyo only receives "minor" doses.

Heard that Reactor #3 is more dangerous than #1 because it is a MOX (Mixed oxide) reactor. It has a greater chance of melting down.

Having read the same thing yesterday, I looked into it with a nuclear engineer. See my "6:13pm" update & then "6:58pm" update for response to it from the nuke engineer in Saturday's live blog on the explosion at Unit 1.

In short, he poo-poos the report that the plutonium fuel is any worse than the uranium fuel (and notes also that the concerns about that seem to original emanate from anti-Nuke outfit, FWIW.)

The long term impact from the earthquake with depend on how the performance of the Yen. The repatriation of foreign assets by the Insurers to pay compensation will be an upward pressure on the Yen. The strength of the Japanese Yen will be the real danger to the Japanese economy.

Interestingly, the quick notes coming out of the desks are saying the European Insurers have the most exposure as a region to the Japanese quakes. Since they need to pay compensation, they need to liquidate assets. Assuming they are long their domestic bonds, it would increase the European yields. Another factor in the existing problems of the European sovereigns.

'PRC: In contrast to Washington's ulterior motives, China in an unprecedented move has sent in an emergency team into Japan. Unbeknownst to the world, China has world-leading expertise in extinguishing nuclear meltdowns and blocking radiation leaks at their uranium mines and military nuclear plants. This was discovered on a 2003 visit to a geological research center in the uranium-rich Altai mountain region of Xinjiang, where a scientist disclosed "off the record" China's development of mineral blends that block radiation "much more than 90 percent, nearly totally". When asked why the institute doesn't commercialize their formulas, he responded: "We've never thought about that." That's too bad because if one of China's exports was ever needed, it's their radiation blanket.http://en.m4.cn/archives/5789.html

So, the Prime Minister should be hoping that Japan's tiny Christian community is feverishly praying. Because right now, Japan and much of the world are living on a prayer.

Brad, you've let a Pat-Robertson-style xtian fundie nutter infiltrate the place ~ next we will be informed that the Tsunami etc., is Jehovah's belated revenge for allowing women the vote in 1919.

Here's my prayer: "Oh Dear Jeezis skrewed to a shingle, if you exist and could bother getting the proverbial finger out anytime in the near future, please cause your followers (and particularly the dumb yankee hypocrite variety thereof) to STFU until they have a clue and can lay off the evangelical god-bothering for ONE damned minute in their stupid lives. Amen!"

The vertical plume of the explosion at Reactor 3 appears to be shot from a cannon, with some very heavy elements falling out of the cloud. The shape of the dark cloud suggests that the top of the reactor vessel has ruptured. A bright red/orange flash can be seen at the moment of the explosion --- but hydrogen flame is invisible.

The hydrogen explosion at Reactor 1 blew the top and sides off the outer containment shell, hurling light dust and debris evenly away from the center. The shockwave propagation typical of hydrogen ignition events is not evident in the Reactor 2 explosion.

To be precise, the form of nuclear power allowed us lesser beings by our lords and masters has issues, especially when hit with the worst disaster locally in over a thousand years... and the plants in Japan are dated. Newer designs would have fared better. Simple fact.

And there are other forms of nuclear power both already prototyped and proposed that we are not permitted to use or research... and they would not have these issues even with a disaster of this magnitude.

Rail against the limits artificially imposed by our owners?

Certainly.

Rail against corporate greed that screws up with even the limited options that we are allowed?

Definitely.

Run screaming into the cold dark night at the mere mention of the word "nuclear?"

Then, unknowingly, you're dancing to the tune of the oligarchs... and unless you belong to the right groups you're not even getting reimbursed for your trouble.

CNN is actively obfuscating and outright lying through its teeth re: meltdown. There is a full blown globalist media conspiracy to downplay the total nuclear disaster that has occurred. The spent fuel rods were stored in the upper level of the reactor building - WHICH IS GONE. Ask where 20 years worth of spent fuel rods went! These reactors have experienced total failure - and the radiation levels are in fact off the charts.

It's perfectly possible that people are lying their collective asses off about a variety of things at the plants... but your links equate to a couple of pages of generic ranting with no way to sort details out.

Why don't you call Obama and ask him to make public the live feed he is watching from the spy satellite parked directly over the blown reactors providing a perfect view of what remains? Does logic tell you that there is no containment on three blown nuclear reactors, or do you require someone with authority to confirm what your own eyes have seen?

Why in the world do you require me (or anyone) to provide you with details?

Have you done any research of your own into these reactor buildings? The links to Wikipedia were provided to you. Have you researched where these reactors store their spent fuel rods? Have you observed the tops of these buildings are blown off? Do you require hand holding to learn this for yourself?

When the top of a nuclear building is blown off, what do you deduce on your own?

I love your mind, Zap, but are you really asking for proof in linkage of that salient fact? Beyond the EPA telling us in 2001 the air in Lower Manhattan was perfectly safe to breath - as just one (comparatively minor) example - what more proof do you need?

Amy Goodman reports that "Monday’s explosion, caused by a hydrogen buildup, blew the roof off a containment building at Fukushima Daiichi’s reactor."

According to Yurika Ayukawa, Professor of Climate, Energy, and Environment at Chiba University of Commerce in Japan, this has threatened a meltdown of reactor 2 at Fukushima 1, which makes "the third reactor that's going to be in a very critical situation."

The BBC reported LIVE on the afternoon of 9/11 that WTC7 had just collapsed, while it was in fact IN THE FRAME in the background behind the reporters head - only to fall some twenty minutes later. These reports out of Japan are no less absurd. You just saw the entire building explode, but are told to believe that the fuel rods remain well under control - while in other reports, members of the US Military have been exposed to radiation.

As if.

Don't wait for the "news" to tell you what your eyes have already seen - or what you can deduce to be true with your own magnificent mind.

VIENNA: The UN atomic watchdog said Monday that it has no indication at the current time of a possible meltdown at the earthquake-hit nuclear reactors in Japan.

"We have no indication of fuel that is currently melting at this point," said James Lyons, director of the Safety at Nuclear Installations division at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).(AFP)

Simply stated, there is no emergency protocol that includes pouring seawater into nuclear reactors - other than as a last resort. They are well beyond the point of control. This will not be contained. Where are the spent fuel rods stored on site? Why is no one discussing that?

FYI
'From the beginning of the Great East Japan Earthquake, I have followed Japanese-language media closely, to see what they have to say about Japan's nuclear reactors. It is clear that the Japanese people were under a virtual information blockade, regarding the severity of the problems and their potential health consequences, due to the Japanese media's failure to challenge their government's lack of transparency and accountability. The possibility of a complete meltdown was frequently raised in international media from Day 1, but the Japanese media were silent on the worst case scenario at least for the first 24 hours.'
etchttp://mrzine.monthlyrev...011/furuhashi140311.html

Three Fukushima Daiichi reactors have suffered a loss-of-coolant accident and may yet undergo a partial or complete core meltdown with catastrophic consequences. There have been radioactivity releases of unspecified quantities from the reactors. Radioactivity from Fukushima has been detected 100 km away.

There is clinching evidence of reactor core/fuel damage from Reactor 1, which suffered two explosions, while Reactor 3 suffered one. The situation is yet to be brought under control despite desperate measures like pumping seawater into the reactors. There are fears that the spent fuel rods stored in the Reactor 1 building, in keeping with the General Electric design, pose a grave hazard because of the site flooding after the tsunami. These rods contain large quantities of high level radioactive waste, the statement said.

And here's the description in the link above that speaks of where the 20 years worth of spent fuel rods USED TO BE:

Fears also mounted about the threat posed by the pools of water where years of spent fuel rods are stored.

At the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1, where an explosion Saturday destroyed a building housing the reactor, the spent-fuel pool, in accordance with General Electric's design, is placed above the reactor. Tokyo Electric said it was trying to figure out how to maintain water levels in the pools, indicating that the normal safety systems there had failed too.

Failure to keep adequate water levels in a pool would lead to a catastrophic fire, said nuclear experts, some of whom think Unit 1's pool might now be outside.

"As Robert Alvarez, a former nuclear energy adviser to President Bill Clinton, has written, if these waste containers, euphemistically called “ponds,” were to be damaged in an explosion and lose their cooling and radiation-shielding water, they could burst into flame from the resulting burning of the highly flammable zirconium cladding of the fuel rods, blasting perhaps three to nine times as much of these materials into the air as was released by the Chernobyl reactor disaster. (And that’s if just one reactor blows!) Each pool, Alvarez says, generally contains five to ten times as much nuclear material as the reactors themselves."

So, I ask each of you point blank, have we not already experienced multiple Chernobyls with these explosions and the blasting of spent fuel rods and highly radioactive water from these "ponds" into the atmosphere? What does your own mind tell you? What did you see in these explosions? Do you need to hear it confirmed by "experts" or "politicians?"

Why are you not seeing this story on CNN? What caused a "radioactive cloud?"

Run screaming into the cold dark night at the mere mention of the word "nuclear?"

Then, unknowingly, you're dancing to the tune of the oligarchs... and unless you belong to the right groups you're not even getting reimbursed for your trouble.

Indeed I don't run screaming. I was once a scientist (once a scientist always a scientist?) and used the "nuclear power" of radioactive isotopes in many experiments (and experienced a spill which caused me to have to collect my urine for 24 hours to see if it glowed in the dark!

(Well...really to see if it registered on the scintillation counter at all. It didn't, over background, anyway.)

But, I stand by Greenpeace's quote. Nuclear power, such as we have at this time in this country or in this world, is simply NOT safe in any way. Whether it ever can be MADE safe is debatable, and somehow I think I'd take government assurances of nuclear energy safety about as much as I would take assurances of safety of deep ocean oil well rigs, or natural gas fracking, or any of that sort of stuff.

And the trouble is, once radiation is leaked into the world, it ain't going away for a very, very, very long time.

Background radiation is higher than it used to be. Think about that. I, for one, do not want to let any more of that type of genie out of the bottle. This is one that really can't be put back in once it's out.

The boiling-water reactors at Fukushima — 40 years old and designed by General Electric — have spent fuel pools several stories above ground adjacent to the top of the reactor. The hydrogen explosion may have blown off the roof covering the pool, as it's not under containment. The pool requires water circulation to remove decay heat. If this doesn't happen, the water will evaporate and possibly boil off. If a pool wall or support is compromised, then drainage is a concern. Once the water drops to around 5-6 feet above the assemblies, dose rates could be life-threatening near the reactor building. If significant drainage occurs, after several hours the zirconium cladding around the irradiated uranium could ignite.

Then all bets are off.

On average, spent fuel ponds hold five-to-ten times more long-lived radioactivity than a reactor core. Particularly worrisome is the large amount of cesium-137 in fuel ponds, which contain anywhere from 20 to 50 million curies of this dangerous radioactive isotope. With a half-life of 30 years, cesium-137 gives off highly penetrating radiation and is absorbed in the food chain as if it were potassium.

In comparison, the 1986 Chernobyl accident released about 40 percent of the reactor core’s 6 million curies. A 1997 report for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) by Brookhaven National Laboratory also found that a severe pool fire could render about 188 square miles uninhabitable, cause as many as 28,000 cancer fatalities, and cost $59 billion in damage. A single spent fuel pond holds more cesium-137 than was deposited by all atmospheric nuclear weapons tests in the Northern Hemisphere combined.

If the recent blasts emitted the highly radioactive water and spent fuel rods into the atmosphere, all of this hand-wringing about whether or not the reactor units melt down is moot. The damage is already done - with the remnants strewn into the ocean and air.

What is the ACTUAL exposure level for ALL sailors aboard the USS Ronald Reagan? What role will Jeffrey Immelt play from here forward relative to this exposure, likely caused by GE's plant design - which failed to account for the venting of hydrogen gas from the building AND stored the spent fuel rods atop a nuclear bomb?

Did a US company, whose CEO (Immelt) is a top adviser to the President of the United States, just doom the crew of the flagship of the Republican party, the USS Ronald Reagan, via exposure to a radioactive cloud equal to "multiple Chernobyls?"

God, I hope not, but this crew will let us know the truth soon enough.

There is growing concern about the status of irradiated fuel pools at all of the Fukushima reactors. The pools are located inside the outer containment building above the core and, like the reactor cores, require constant cooling. Pictures from the site show that at least the top third of two containment buildings have been blown off, so the integrity of the fuel pools is unclear.

3,450 old fuel assemblies were in the #3 Reactor building as of 2101 (how many of these were MOX?).

The threat of a fission explosion at the Fukushima power facility emerged today when the roof of the number three reactor exploded and fears that a spent fuel pool, located over the reactor, has been compromised. The pool, designed to allow reactor fuel to cool off for several years, was constructed on top of the Fukushima reactors instead of underground. As of 2010, there were 3450 fuel assemblies in the pool at the number three reactor. The destruction of the number three reactor building has experts concerned about whether the spent fuel storage pool, which sits just below the roof, could have survived intact the hydrogen explosion. The explosion was much more severe than Saturday’s blast at the number one reactor.

As massive amounts of seawater are pumped by fire trucks into Fukushima’s failing nuclear reactors and cooling ponds, the radioactive waste water, now laden with a variety of radioisotopes, is being flushed into the sea.

Just how much danger the spent fuel pool raises is made clear in a November 2010 powerpoint presentation from the Tokyo Electric Company detailing how fuel storage works at the huge complex.

The fuel inventory in the pool is detailed on page 9. According to TEPCO, each reactor generates 700 "waste" fuel assemblies a year, and there are 3450 assemblies in each pool at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, plus another 6,291 in a common pool in a separate building.

As shown in slide 10, the common pool building sits at ground level, with the pool itself above ground. The building also has windows on at least one side, and experts fear these were broken out by the tsunami which would have flooded the building.

According to Albert Donnay, a former nuclear engineer, “This means the common pool is now full of radioactive and corrosive seawater that will cause the fuel assemblies to fail and burst open, as they are doing inside the reactor cores that have been deliberately flooded with seawater. If the pool drains or boils away, the fuel will melt, burn and even possibly explode if the fuel collapses into a sufficiently critical mass.”

This may explain why the Japanese government began adding boric acid to the reactor spent fuel pools at the facility shortly after the earthquake and tidal wave.